Gaming computers are designed to enhance and refine your gaming experience. No game requires a quality keyboard that is built specifically for gaming, but your performance in most modern games can be improved with one. People who play games that require a lot of speed or APM (actions per minute), like an RTS (real-time strategy) or FPS (first-person shooter), can really benefit from a quick, responsive gaming keyboard. They’re also great for games that require a lot of micromanaging or lengthy sequences of actions, because you can set custom macros that will do the job for you. To learn more and compare the best gaming keyboards on the market, read our articles on gaming keyboards.

Gaming Keyboard: What to Look For

When it comes to selecting a gaming keyboard it’s important to find one with plenty of features. Every brand usually has a specific area or areas that they focus on, which makes each one unique in its own way. For that reason, we rated the products we reviewed based on how universally beneficial they are for a variety of game types. We also took the price into consideration. Even though price did not affect the ratings, we compare PC keyboards that were under 0. They broke down into the following categories.

Features
When it comes to gaming, you want a computer keyboard with convenient benefits. You also want one that will help improve your gaming experience. These things are important because without these extras you’d have a regular keyboard, which defeats the whole purpose of spending extra money on one of these keyboards.

Some of the main things we look for in this category are the presence of media keys, a gaming mode that disables buttons and commands that could potentially kick you out of your game, anti-ghosting for the button masher players and a few more things like the length of the warranty. Media keys are mostly for the quick ability to adjust volume and cycle through your playlist, to find the song that will get you in the mood to decimate your opponent. Anti-ghosting allows you to hit multiple keys at once without errors.

Design
This category is all about functionality and convenience. There are a few things that really add to a gaming keyboard and make it superior to another. First of all, a lot of gamers play in a dark or dimly lit room which can make backlighting on a keyboard very useful. We looked for versatile options, like a removable wrist rest. Connection options, like a USB hub and a headphone/microphone jack, can also be useful.

Gamers are typically a little rough with their peripherals, especially when they’re not doing well, so we took durability into consideration. Many people that play games have a tendency to mash buttons, and they are typically the same ones over and over again. This can shorten the life of a keyboard that isn’t made to withstand the abuse.

Customization
There are a few customizations that just make gaming keyboards fun, like changing the color of the backlighting, but there are a few that can be quite useful. Most of these exceptional keyboards have the ability to program keys to do specific functions. Some even have special keys that are specifically for that. These will commonly allow you to write macros or multi-command functions that can be programmed to a single key. Short cuts like these can really give you an upper hand in most types of games.

These are the three categories that we used to group up the features of a gaming keyboard. The Logitech G15, the Razer Lycosa and the Logitech G110 are some of the best performance keyboards. Each one is unique in its own way, so it’s important to find the one that fits your gaming style. Once you do find that match, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the improved game play it adds.